Said Jaziri, Controversial Muslim Cleric, Caught After Allegedly Entering U.S. Illegally East of San Diego

Said Jaziri, a controversial Islamic cleric who had been deported to Tunisia from Canada, was caught east of San Diego after he was allegedly smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Jaziri was a Montreal imam who led Canadian protests against against a Danish cartoonist who made light of the prophet Mohammad in 2006. That cartoonist received many death threats.

Border Patrol agents allege they found the 43-year-old in the trunk of a suspected smuggler's BMW near the border east of San Diego.

The Times reported he was being held as a material witness against the man charged with smuggling, Kenneth Robert Lawler.

The cleric's supporters say he has been wrongly targeted for his fundamentalist views. It's not clear why he wanted to get to the U.S. so bad (he was reported to have flown from African to Europe to Central America before taking a bus to Tijuana).

The Times reports that he told smugglers to get him to a "safe place anywhere in the U.S."

Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a
young stringer, the New York Times.